Rohit Sharma-led India have been on a roll at ICC tournaments in recent years, winning 23 of their 24 matches and claiming two major trophies, the 2024 T20 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy. It wasn’t always like this, especially when Rohit took over the captaincy of Team India in 2021.
Rohit Sharma – the most successful IPL captain at the time – was handed the captaincy by Virat Kohli after a disappointing run in the 2021 T20 World Cup. However, despite the change of guard, things didn’t change much at the following year’s T20 World Cup as India lost to England in the semi-finals.
From then on, Rohit took the initiative and vowed to play an aggressive brand of cricket. The strategy paid off for the Men in Blue at the 2023 ODI World Cup, where they reached the final before losing to Australia in the Ahmedabad.
However, instead of backing down, Rohit has doubled down on the aggressive approach at the top of the order, helping India get the results they need in the knockout stages of ICC events.
Dinesh Karthik lauds Rohit Sharma’s approach:
Former India cricketer Dinesh Karthik decoded Rohit Sharma’s strategy in an recent interaction where talked about how the Indian captain changed his approach from 2022 to win two back to back ICC trophies.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Karthik said, “2019 was a bit of a marker. We lost the semi finals, and then they tried hard and in bilaterals they were good. Team India played in a very different manner. 2022 was when the marker was set. We played very differently in the league stage. But come the big game, people backed away. The pressure got to Team India, and that is when I think Rohit Sharma the captain decided if I am going to be the captain from here on, this is how I want my team to play, and I’m not going to rely on anybody. I am going to take it upon myself to know and show the other members of the team what intent means. And I think that changed the outlook of how India has played from there on.”
Asked if it was a similar kind of change that Ben Stokes brought for the England side, Karthik said, “You gotta understand, in doing that, he had the skill set of the rest of the crew as well, which were very, very good. But what he did do was he went hard in the league stage, but in the semi-finals and the finals he took it upon himself to do that again, and he did it so well. He’s good at it because, you know, the skill set that he’s got”
“If you do look at how well India has dominated cricket. For some time they’ve been qualifying the semis and quarters and all of that, but they never made it past the finishing line. And that changed post that T20 World Cup that happenned in the Caribbean.” Karthik added
